Lecture 27 - Comparative cognition Flashcards
Comparitive cognition
Underneath all your fancy tricks, there are some basic adaptive learning mechanisms that were wired into you millennia ago that still influence the way that you behave
These basic learning principles are important in terms of structuring environments to achieve particular aims in terms of looking at how associations can be formed, that people may try and rationalise later but are the result of quite early learning principles
Can’t actually question animals without language, incredibly difficult to see if they have similar mechanisms to humans such as episodic memory
Some of the difficulties with studying complex cognition
Overcoming anthropocentricity.
Defining things in such a human way that almost by definition, it excludes anything else that another animal could be doing
Defining cognitive processes.
How good is it? How does it work?
Can be hard to define
Determining quantitative or qualitative differences.
So when looking at an animal’s ability in a certain domain, is it doing what we do but just at a lower level? - this would be a quantitative difference
OR is what we do so different in quality that it falls on a different dimension to what the animal is capable of
Problem of ‘clever hans’
Horse in germany, owner discovered that Hans had the ability to understand spoken German
German Science Academy did a series of studies looking at what Hans abilities were and Hans was genuinely very clever, what he was really clever at doing was reading body language e.g. when the owner said what is 2 plus three, Hans would watch the owner and start tapping until the owner just relaxed slightly and then would stop (that was his cue, he would get a carrot etc) (this was provided that the person asking the question knew the answer )
This is the other problem with comparative cognition - is that animals can solve tasks to a certain extent by using completely different methods or principles than the one that you are trying to examine.
Clever Hans stalks the whole area of comparative cognition
Language
Communication and Language
Non-human animals communicate with each other. They use smells, sounds, gestures to exchange information.
Bees: Waggle dance.
Dogs: Gestures and odours signal sexual and aggressive readiness.
Whales and dolphins: Clicks and whistles.
Vervet monkeys: Different vocalisations signal the presence of particular threats - hawk, snake, leopard.
Clearly a communication is going on with these vocalisations but it is not what we call language
Humans communicate with other species (e.g., dogs, cats, parrots).
Distinguish tone rather than the actual words that are being said
These forms of communication not normally considered language. They lack the extended vocabulary and the syntactic and semantic structures that allow a language to be flexible and creative.
Language is a special type of communication, but there is no definitive definition for when communication becomes using a language.
Such definitions of language often include
Language is a special type of communication, but there is no definitive definition for when communication becomes using a language. Such definitions often include:
Learning a set of abstract or arbitrary symbols.
e.g. table doesn’t convey any essence of what a table in whereas babel actually has elements within it that slightly describes what you are explaining
Using these symbols to express thoughts or to indicate objects and events that may or may not be present.
No table-ness about the actual symbols themselves
Learning rules associated with the order of these symbols (syntax).
Word order is important
Using syntax to generate different meaningful sentences.
Syntax is important - how the symbols are put together
Since we have abstract symbols and we have syntax, it means that there are hundreds and thousands of never ways of saying things and the ability to communicate a wide range of things is limitless
Flexibility in language, multiple ways to communicate the same thing
When we are talking about language we are talking about a specific special form of communication
Language in apes
Early studies of ape’s language abilities tried to teach chimpanzees to talk, raising chimpanzees in homes and mimicking the rearing of a human child.
Took a baby chimpanzee and raise it as a human child, what sort of cognitive abilities including language would that chimpanzee form by being brought up in this enriched human environment?
The Kelloggs (1933) raised Gua alongside their son. Gua learned to understand some commands, but never uttered any English words. Made no vocailisations that even approximated what would expect a human child to make
The Hayes (1951) raised Vicki. She learnt to make three “recognisable” words (papa, mama, and cup), but only with great difficulty and patient training. Language was obviously not something that came very easily or naturally to chimpanzees
The chimpanzee is not anatomically suited for human speech.
Vocal tract is not suited for producing the sounds that we use in human speech
Kelloggs (1933)
The Kelloggs (1933) raised Gua alongside their son. Gua learned to understand some commands, but never uttered any English words. Made no vocailisations that even approximated what would expect a human child to make
The Hayes (1951)
The Hayes (1951) raised Vicki. She learnt to make three “recognisable” words (papa, mama, and cup), but only with great difficulty and patient training. Language was obviously not something that came very easily or naturally to chimpanzees
Human anatomy
teeth are upright, evenly spaced and touch each other.
mouth is relatively small, can be open and shut rapidly
lip muscles are more highly developed
Have more flexibility with these muscles
tongue is thick, muscular, and highly mobile, and can restrict the air flow in a number of ways.
Our language has developed to suit the tools that we came with
Sign language and Washoe
In the 1960s a series of investigators tried teaching sign language to chimpanzees.
The most successful was the Gardners (couple-experimenter duo) and Washoe (chimp).
Began in infancy to establish the equivalent of a parent- child bond.
Washoe had a stimulating and language-rich environment.
During first year
Learning one word at a time. Fewer “naming” and more “action” words than human children.
More action words learnt probably reflects the fact that chimpanzees are just born more active and more mobile than a human child
By end of first year
Began making combinations of signs - “more fruit”, “out open please hurry”.
By four
Produce about 160 signs, but understanding more extensive. Although 2 and 3 word combinations occurred, little evidence of syntax (very little indication of word order being used in a meaningful way).
Nim Chimpsky
Terrace studied the sign language of Nim Chimpsky. His results and interpretations of others’ findings pointed to severe deficits in chimp language
1. Very low numbers of morphemes (words) per utterance.
Utterances were largely quite brief
- Nim’s communications were much less informative than children’s.
- No evidence of syntactic organisation.
Nim tickle Roger and Roger tickle nim were the same thing to Him, even though the people who are teaching the language are using these in discriminative ways.
‘4. Many signings seemed cued by the human teacher.
Seems to being producing a three sign sentence but in fact Nim was just imitating his teachers
Research area became highly emotionally charged and extremely controversial. Harder to get funding due to questioning of the usefulness of the research or the validity of the research
Duane Raumbaugh
Duane Raumbaugh developed “Yerkish” for Lana, Austin & Sherman. Mixed success.
Developed the language for the chimpanzees and they would
Each symbol represented a word and the computer recorded this
Mixed success but on occasions one would ask the other for some food stuff or item that he had in his cage that the other one didn’t have
Never really progressed much beyond that claims of the sign language people. Limited vocabularies and very little understanding of any sort of syntax
Kanzi
(Savage Raumbaugh) Kanzi - Pygmy chimp (bonobo), mother training on keyboard, but Kanzi only sporadic interest.
Smaller, less aggressive, more social than the common chimpanzee
At 2.5 years separated from mother - unexpected interest in keyboard. Appeared to have about 10 symbols already.
Reduced reward-based learning for more naturalistic training.
Would try use the symbols to engage in activities that were more chimpanzee focused
Kanzi can produce language using a lexigram vocabulary of about 200 symbols.
He also refers to objects not present.
Kanzi understands not only lexigrams, but has some understanding of spoken language.
They are talking and he is relying using the board
Seems to understand about 500 spoken words.
Better receptive language than production of words
Kanzi also seems to understand simple sentences; that is, he has some grasp of syntax.
Raumbaugh wears a welding mask while she speaks to him to try cut down what other cues he might be using
Syntax tests - what he is going to be asked to do is to take one object and do something to another object and it is whether he gets the things in the right order which indicates his understanding
Kanzi has had his abilities to understand sentences compared to human children’s performance. He seems to be about as good as a 2, perhaps 2.5, year-old child.
Understands agent comprehension, object comprehension , recipient comprehension
For agent action object action recipient - can act out with figurines and can make correction when the scenario is flipped
Agent action object patient, agent action recipient also understood
